17 ms·

OpenBSD Is Now My Workstation

294 points by sogubsys 7y ago

dijit 7y ago
I like openbsd. I like their attitude (even if many don’t) I like what they’ve given to the UNIX-likes, and what they strip away due to complexity (removal of Bluetooth) or lack of decent UX (wpa_supplicant), or just potential issues (removal of Hyperthreading) I know it’s probably controversial to mention it; but I’m also glad they didn’t buy into the code of conduct saga that waved over FreeBSD and eventually Linux. I’ve used the OS as a daily driver, it certainly was nice, albeit slow. I would go back if I could avoid some of the Linux/MacOS stuff I really need. I still use it on personal servers and I still really love it. I send them €50/mo but I don’t feel like it’s enough. I wish they had more resources to bring things like AC Wi-Fi to the fold. Truly impressive work to all involved.
- temptemptemp111 7y ago
  Yep, same. I'm not ready to flee Linux just because of the CoC, though. Need to stand our ground.
- umvi 7y ago
  > but I’m also glad they didn’t buy into the code of conduct saga that waved over FreeBSD and eventually Linux. I'm a bit out of the loop, but I thought it started with Linux because Linus swore/ranted/"abused" contributors or something? Or am I thinking of something else?
  - dijit 7y ago
    It’s fair to be out of the loop. I wish I was, because dissenting for any reason is seen as being a villain or a troll. For a little context though the freebsd code of conduct was instantiated in 14th February 2018 - the Linux one was altered to be the current one on September 21st of the same year (which is when the Linux CoC controversy began).
  - calcifer 7y ago
    He was quite abusive actually, not "abusive".
    - derefr 7y ago
      You seem to be interpreting the parent as using scare-quotes to disagree with the idea that Linus's behavior was "abusive." But the parent comment was, as far as I can tell, intending to use regular quotation marks, in the way a journalist does (and as I just did)—to mention what someone else said, without endorsing or denying that opinion as their own, in order to avoid an argument. (Personally, I think more things people describe should be put in quotation marks. A lot of Internet arguments are started by people trying to argue others out of beliefs they don't actually personally have.)
      - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
        Quotes only work with attribution
- vvvij 7y ago
  Do you think it would fare better under new AMD CPUs? (besides the raw increment in performance) I do hope that as long as Theo is in charge they never but into the whole CoC thing. Thankfully, from what I recall, some of their biggest backers are from China and thankfully they don't really give a crap about CoC, feelings or human decency in tech, for better or for worse.
- cpach 7y ago
  What is it that you don’t like regarding CoC?
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    I'm not OP, but: > Harassment includes but is not limited to: Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, [...]. -- FreeBSD CoC Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part? I can only assume that they'll be more lenient on disparaging comments that don't reinforce "systemic oppression", i.e. they'll apply "positive discrimination", otherwise it makes no sense to include such an expression in the CoC. I refuse to participate in any project that discriminates people based on their personal traits, that includes "positive discrimination".
    - YUMad 7y ago
      Because 'systemic oppression' is a made up concept, just like 'Jesus'. And just like Jesus, it's a guilt-exploiting profit- and power-seeking concept.
      - dang 7y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - klodolph 7y ago
      > Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part? Because systematic oppression is more of a systemic problem. Individual problems are easier to solve than systemic problems, i.e, you don’t need a code of conduct to solve a problem with one or two people in your association. If you make one disparaging comment to someone, we can hope that they take that one comment in stride and move on. If you make a disparaging comment that reinforces systemic oppression, it’s no longer a single comment, but it’s part of a larger problem. The way these comments harm the group is that e.g. in response to low-level misogynistic comments, women silently leave the group. You might not even notice this happening until it is too late. One of the core freedoms which is protected by the first amendment is the freedom of association, and a key part of that is the freedom not to associate with people you don’t like. If you don’t make an explicit choice about who you want in your association, the choice will be made for you by the most toxic members. So you are basically given a choice between an open code of conduct which people can discuss or comment on, or a secret/hidden network of people who make the decisions without any clear way to understand why they make these decisions or how to appeal them. That’s just my take on it.
- hackermailman 7y ago
  Most OpenBSD developers know each other and meet on a regular basis so likely why no CoC is needed when there isn't dozens or hundreds of contributors that don't meet. I miss OpenBSD for the certainty of what my system is doing, these other systems I have to use for work some intelligent process comes a long and rewrites my configs or something else annoying.
- adrianratnapala 7y ago
  Does OpenBSD have an alternative to wpa_supplicant? I've been using wpa_supplicant under the hood for ages, but only recently learned anything about it... and it's actually very good, except that it's CLI interface is so low-level and difficult to use.
  - octotoad 7y ago
    Its standard ifconfig handles all the equivalent functionality.
    - dTal 7y ago
      I don't use OpenBSD for various functionality-related reasons, but experiencing that was an eye-opener. It makes me mad that Linux doesn't use such a clearly superior system, and leads one to wonder what other needlessly complex interfaces we put up with unquestioningly.
      - microcolonel 7y ago
        There are things other than wpa_supplicant, but wpa_supplicant is just sorta "good enough", everything generally works. It's a different approach. For me, my OpenBSD moment was when I used the backlight brightness keys on a laptop in a vt, and it Just Worked™.
        adrianratnapala 7y ago
        I would put it the other way around. wpa_supplicant is actually very good at doing what it does. But rolling it's functionality into ifconfig is probably "good enough". wpa_supplicant is an application of the "do one thing" philosophy. The kernel provides a some basic hardware-abstracted plumbing which lets a specialist tool do all the complicated handshaking and what-not for wireless. This saves the basic tools (ifconfig, ip) from having to build in all that wireless complexity. But it does introduce an extra moving part that has to be configured. For this reason, just bloating it into the basic tool is likely to be good enough, and also provider a superior UX (for nerds like us).
- somacert 7y ago
  Openbsd has a code of conduct. It's been there a while. https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html only half joking
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    > Intelligent people may look at the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. Repeating the same points that didn't convince someone previously rarely changes their mind, and irritates all the other readers. This one is crucial. I see so little respect for tolerance around various projects these days.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    I can support a CoC that opens with, "Plain text, 72 characters per line". Standards™!
- wrycoder 7y ago
  I don't think there are many who send €50/mo, kudos to you! Few of their corporate users give much back at all. I used OpenBSD as my workstation a decade ago and also ran it on a firewall box. However, upgrading the system every six months is tedious: basically, you manually download the files, overwrite the kernel and userland core, and then do a three way merge of /etc. Plus there's a bit of manual work required to deleted unused files and account for moved files: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade65.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade65.html After that, you still have to upgrade the ports tree (which has gotten easier). Note that skipping upgrades is not supported. Security updates between the six month upgrades are handled by monitoring the security list and downloading and applying patches as instructed. If you are running a bunch of identical servers professionally, it's not much of a burden, but it is if you are upgrading one workstation and a firewall box. I got tight on time and went back to Debian/apt. Does anyone here know how to do this more efficiently? (It is a really nice system, and the man pages are superb.)
  - asveikau 7y ago
    sysmerge has made the upgrade process a lot easier in the last several years. It was a lot more painful in the past.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    Is it easier or harder to just do a full reinstall and reconfigure it with a script (chef or something custom), while preserving your data directory?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Somewhat like sibling comment, I'd be really tempted to put /home on its own filesystem, control/configure everything else with Ansible (or Chef or Puppet or [...]), and just do a fresh install every 6 months. For bonus points, automate the install part with an autoinstall file. Keep in mind, there's setup cost here; it's easy for me to say because I'm already controlling my system with Ansible, but if you're just getting started it's harder.
  - sirn 7y ago
    In -current there’s sysupgrade(8) that handles the “download bsd.rd, boot bsd.rd, upgrade, sysmerge” steps automatically in an unattended manner.
- bitwize 7y ago
  Projects without a code of conduct are either immature or led by reactionaries, and in either case have a much higher risk of toxicity. If you want to get something done in a communitarian fashion, implementing, clearly stating, and enforcing rules of conduct is an absolute must.
  - tick_tock_tick 7y ago
    I agree with you in principle but most of the codes of conduct being pushed during the last major wave had very little to do with that goal. They were clearly targeted at policing users online/offline conduct and values outside of the project rather than fixing any active issues for that project.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      A person who's a dick outside the official channels is much more likely to be a dick on the official channels also. Tolerating such people is inimical to creating a welcoming community, as they pose considerable risk of disrupting development activity and intimidating people who are or might potentially be making valuable contributions.
      - jim-jim-jim 7y ago
        Do all projects have to be "welcoming" though? Sometimes I wonder if OpenBSD (and other projects that emphasize simplicity) are as good as they are precisely because they seem to attract opinionated, blunt developers with thick hides.
  - hiram112 7y ago
    I suppose you're right. Before the CoC craze, the open source community just wasn't able to crank out anything of technical value. But since then, things have really taken off, and there's no doubt we can attribute it to the CoC and also the non-technical community members who, more often than not, demanded we carry it.
    - 7y ago
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
>Speed is Stellar >Speed is not a concern for me. Is he saying that speed isn't a concern for him in general? If so, why mention that the speed is stellar, then? Or is he saying that the system is so light in general that he doesn't suspect speed will become a problem down the line?
- ziddoap 7y ago
  It is pretty ambiguous, isn't it? I read it similar to your 2nd take, that the speed is abundant enough that not much needs to be said - its just fast.
- sogubsys 7y ago
  You're right, my mistake in communication there. Speed is not a concern for me because it is fast for everything I use the laptop for. I didn't hit snags where things were slow. I'll update the post later for clarity. Thank you for pointing it out.
  - blackhaz 7y ago
    Great stuff. Also a big fan of OpenBSD, but what put me off eventually is lack of VMs, Wine and... speed. On Thinkpad T410 (ancient) it was noticeably slower than FreeBSD almost on any task, especially video playback in the browser. Not really related to the file system use. Perhaps, the effect is not as pronounced on CPUs of these days. Software selection was also a little claustrophobic. I'm now using FreeBSD as my main machine for almost a year - really happy with the outcome, but even there some areas, like neural networks for example, are difficult. (But Keras and Theano are there!) In many aspects OpenBSD was amazing. It needed very little tinkering with to get running properly, configs and ps ax were super-clean. Amazing environment.
    - edwintorok 7y ago
      There is some work done about VMs: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html
- 7y ago
gbrown_ 7y ago
> vmd is cool tech, for sure, but it isn’t that useful to me. It is best if you want to run OpenBSD virtual machines or gimped Linux virtual machines. The use of "gimped" is poor choice of words. It would be better if the author described specifically what fell short for them.
- sogubsys 7y ago
  From https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html The following features are available: serial console access to the virtual machines tap(4) interfaces per-VM user/group ownership privilege separation raw, qcow2 and qcow2-derived images dumping and restoring of guest system memory virtual switch management pausing and unpausing VMs The following features are not available at this time: graphics snapshots guest SMP support hardware passthrough live migration across hosts live hardware change Supported guest operating systems are currently limited to OpenBSD and Linux. As there is no VGA support yet, the guest OS must support serial console.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    One thing I've been meaning to try doing (and probably will indeed try doing on my "workhorse" laptop at home, which is currently insufficiently used) is experiment with running X clients from a vmd-managed Linux VM, plus perhaps figuring out a way to stream audio in/out of the VM (and - as icing on the cake - video in). If I can get reasonably decent graphics, sound, and webcam support (in order of importance), I'd be able to return to running OpenBSD on my work laptop (I'm currently unable to do so because there are a couple apps I use daily for work that don't run on OpenBSD).
  - gbrown_ 7y ago
    I'm aware graphics support isn't fully there. My concern is for the general audience not familiar with the current status. In the post to hand wave over what didn't work when tried and call it "gimped" leads the reader to think any number of things may not work. I see this has been updated with a link to the FAQ. I'm a big believer in laying out problems as; - What was expected - What was tried - What was the result - Why the result differed from the expectation
stonogo 7y ago
OpenBSD will download your wifi firmware during first boot (post-install) if there is a configured internet connection (i.e. ethernet).
- microcolonel 7y ago
  A lot of Linux distros just ship a lot of this firmware, not expecting to be litigated against for it; and it seems to work out.
  - petecox 7y ago
    c.f. Debian, which has a policy to exclude non-free firmware from its installation media. The onus is on the user to themselves supply the firmware. https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en
- sogubsys 7y ago
  You're correct. My complaint was about installation time. I thought there was an instance where I saw all the access points somehow during the installer, but unsure how I did that... and I couldn't replicate it. I suspected that I had wired ethernet configured, and then the installer downloaded firmware to configure wireless? It was just a guess, I didn't look more into it.
- flukus 7y ago
  Is there an easy to use alternative? Less and less laptops are coming with ethernet ports.
loop0 7y ago
I tried openbsd in my thinkpad x220. IDK if the processor only make a huge difference (mine being core i3 2.1ghz), but what I saw was a slow system experience, opening firefox for the first time (after boot) took a decade. I would experience slugishness everytime I closed a tab. And I was using cwm which is supposed to be even more lightweight than xfce4. I'm upgrading my motherboard to have the same processor as the author, maybe I will give another shot.
- dmm 7y ago
  Were you using a traditional spinning rust hard drive? OpenBSD is basically unusable without an SSD because of the filesystem they use.
  - jamesmp98 7y ago
    I'm not overly familiar with OpenBSD (although I do want to try and play with it sometime soon) What filesystem does it use?
    - mikehotel 7y ago
      FFS (Fast File System) or FFS2 (Enhanced Fast File System) https://man.openbsd.org/newfs.8#O https://man.openbsd.org/newfs.8#O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System
      - unop 7y ago
        The irony!
  - loop0 7y ago
    I was using an Intel 80gb ssd msata
  - edwintorok 7y ago
    I think you need to enable Soft Updates: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates I don't know why it is not done by default, running without soft updates feels like using a filesystem without a journal.
rasengan 7y ago
> Update: The core dumps are due to buggy programs. OpenBSD malloc is not as forgiving to blatant programming errors as other implementations of malloc available on other Operating Systems. What is the difference/error?
- yellowapple 7y ago
  OpenBSD's malloc is much more strict for security reasons. A crash sucks, but it's infinitely preferable to an undetected bug that leaks data. Heartbleed was famously possible even when using OpenSSL on OpenBSD because OpenSSL (if I understand right) used its own custom allocator instead of the system malloc, thus bypassing the various attack mitigations OpenBSD's malloc provides (and that would have prevented Heartbleed from affecting OpenBSD systems). This (among other instances of similar behavior) is what prompted the OpenBSD folks to fork OpenSSL into libressl.
auraham 7y ago
I am attached to Ubuntu because of apt, my development stack (python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, and so on), and i3 as window manager. I would like to give it a try, but I am not sure if these applications are available in OpenBSD.
- basscomm 7y ago
  Apt isn't available for OpenBSD, but the rest of the apps you listed are: https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.5/packages/amd64/ https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.5/packages/amd64/
cubano 7y ago
So, you are giving up what seems like your 2 most important apps (Evernote and VMs) just so you can run X operating system on a laptop? Excuse me, but this just doesn't make any sense. Applications are the reason we use computers, not OSs, and to have to make such sacrifices is IMHO just silly. The whole OS holy-war thing seems so played out to me...its 2019 just use whatever works..no one care really. Add to that the apparent political nature of the openbsd "manifesto" and guidelines and I'll just say that I, personally, am not a fan of mixing politics and OSs.
- davesmith1983 7y ago
  Well you can speak for yourself. I am an operating system enthusiast :D
- effie 7y ago
  It's a user vs. enthusiast things. Some enthusiast people deal with computers because they like the technology or the ideas.
- sogubsys 7y ago
  I understand what you're saying but I fear you may be misunderstanding my intentions and opinions. I feel you may be injecting your own issues with things into my blog post. Please allow me explain. The importance of having a secure and correct OS is most important to me (I feel OpenBSD is most appropriate and interesting here). I feel the value of OpenBSD outweighs the lose of two applications. I'm not part of an OS war, I frankly don't care what anyone uses. I just posted about about my experience on my blog (blogging is a new/rare thing for me and I am proud of the post, it took hours to do) and frankly didn't expect the post to HN to do anything (I posted on a whim, a coworker next to me loves the site) :) I intended to migrate off of Evernote at some point, it is a tough band-aid to pull off after getting used to it for 10 years. Not having native VirtualBox on the machine is definitely a dislike, but isn't the end of the world. I only need it for labs. NetBSD can apparently run in vmm, too, just have to pass a boot option for the serial console (but I haven't tried it). For Evernote, I had to ask myself what I'm actually using Evernote for. I'm solely using it for having minimally rich text and website scrapes stored in notebooks, and all notes being searchable. And I want it available wherever I am. I don't use OSR, non-text notes, pro features, related notes, etc. So, I question why I'm still paying for it, entrusting a vendor with all my data, and dealing with non-standard clients outside of windows/mac. Doing something just because I've always done is a terrible pattern. Time to re-evaluate and fix. That's what I did, and now I have an extremely portable and flexible solution that doesn't cost me anything but time, which I'm OK with. I make a living with Linux for high traffic web applications, I use NetBSD and Linux for my personal servers, and OpenBSD for my workstation. I enjoy operating systems and I'm comfortable in all of them. Each one has their own character, their own quirks and pros and cons. One size fits all, for me, is a fool's game. No matter what you choose, there's some price to be paid for what you get. And to be crystal clear: I'm not trying to change hearts and minds, or influence others, or be part of some cool kids club. Ultimately, I'm selfish with my hobbies, which this is, and so I do what solely is interesting to me. If I was able to help others, that's great and I'm happy for that, but I have no expectations. Thank you. I hope we can be on the same page now, and I hope I was not too verbose. Be well. An update to the article too about VMs: Note that for VMs I'm now using Oracle (non-distro provided) Virtualbox with their VRDP active, which is RDP for the VM instance and not the VM OS itself, so can RDP to the VMs on the network much better than libvirt. So, it is good enough. VirtualBox is mainly for intensive labs or monkeying with NetBSD kernel development, which 99% of the time I'd do at home.
davesmith1983 7y ago
I've been using OpenBSD since 3.8. OpenBSD is a great system because it makes sense. If you want to find out how something works. You go to the manual page. A lot of questions about the Operating system can be found on the FAQ. Much like Arch Linux, I don't find myself needing to Google around forums trying to find a solution. I go to the docs and 99% of the time I will find the solution. The reasons for using it aren't really that exciting. It is a basic system that works well.
markhahn 7y ago
surely "my workstation is now openbsd". fwiw, didn't mention anything at all that would make me budge from linux...
- sogubsys 7y ago
  That's OK, I was posting about my experience without intentions to change hearts and minds of others. I'm just a geek playing around, ya know.
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
I hate the fact that Thinkpads are the laptops with the best OpenBSD support. I dislike Thinkpads for two reasons: - They're made by Lenovo. A couple of years ago, Lenovo bundled malware in the BIOS of their laptops [superfish incident]. For that reason, I won't ever again buy a single product from them, since I can't trust them. - They're ugly. I find most current laptops ugly, so this may be my fault, and by itself it wouldn't be enough of a reason not to buy one. But still.
- megous 7y ago
  BIOS?
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    "The engine, which resides in the computer's BIOS, replaces a core Windows system file with its own, allowing files to be downloaded once the device is connected to the internet." https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-software-could-not-be-deleted/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-sof...
- hnnmzh 7y ago
  also - they no longer use T40 style keyboards, which are the best.
  - sogubsys 7y ago
    I do like the keyboard on this T420, it is a pleasure.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    The chiclet keyboard on my T470 is still pretty great, though.
    - Stratoscope 7y ago
      Hardly anyone minds the typing feel of the current or recent generation ThinkPad keyboards. What many of us lament is the loss of the classic 7-row keyboard layout like the T420 had. But that ship sank years ago. I've made my peace with the new layout, but I do miss the old one.
user00012-ab 7y ago
This article is what is wrong with bsd/linux. You have to write an article about all the things you did to get your desktop to just work like any normal desktop works out of the box. In a normal world, the article should read "I installed bsd, and just used my computer to do something useful."
- atq2119 7y ago
  Throwing Linux in with BSD here is not fair. The experience with the major Linux distribution tends to be exactly this: you install them and stuff just works -- especially on desktop hardware.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Well idunno. I don't concern myself with "trends" and such on GNU/Linux, and things generally get better for me year over year. I have used Linux as my main desktop operating system, to do productive work, for years. I pay a bit of attention to the hardware I'm installing it on (which a lot of people I guess don't feel they should need to, but what do they say about macOS?), but other than that it's basically been the same for me for years. I get better peripherals, components, and assembled computers, and the experience gets better in the ways you would expect for that upgrade. I think in both cases, people could stand to pay a little bit of attention to what hardware they're using. A lot of people aren't used to this because their hardware comes with an OS that is ostensibly "certified" for it, in the way that bugs in the integration can sometimes be warranty claims. Those manufacturers pay attention to whether or not drivers are available for Windows to support the hardware they're shipping, but consumers experience it as "it just works".
- sogubsys 7y ago
  There's more to it. It isn't a "Use OpenBSD, everything else sucks", it was simply "I used OpenBSD on a Thinkpad T420 and let me tell you about it". I also posted about that I tried Linux (Ubuntu), FreeBSD, and OpenBSD on the laptop before deciding on OpenBSD. It wasn't made out of stubbornness. It was simply the right choice for me for that laptop. And I shared my experience getting it up to a state I was used to with my previous Linux workstation (that this laptop replaced).
lacampbell 7y ago
Less 'mainstream' OS's seem more viable to me right now, because pretty much every bit of software I use these days runs in either a terminal or a browser. With termux I feel like I could use just an android phone if I had to.
merlincorey 7y ago
Thanks for sharing this! I run OpenBSD on my refurbished T430, and have very similar experiences. Glad you have moved on from Evernote to something local and parse-able!
anthony_doan 7y ago
I bought a used Thinkpad to use OpenBSD. The default installation is good and the internals are easy to understand. It's not as complicated as Linux. The security etho is what brought me to OpenBSD and the simplicity and easy to understand how everything works made me love it even more. The only reason why I haven't use it much after a few months is because I needed RStudio. I wanted to settle for tmux+vim workflow for R but I've been busy with other stuff.
waynesonfire 7y ago
BSD OS's are very appealing to me given the infiltration of systemd on linux. I'm very excited to be deploying FreeBSD on my homelab network.
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
For years I lived in FreeBSD world - servers and laptops. I was fighting the good fight and rationalised that having to only remember one location for network services was a win. Then I took a second look. I realised that I was spending waaayy too much time getting the laptop usable (usually wifi) and not going enough using it I bailed for ubuntu and I cannot remember where the network confit is and hate the GUI but I have stopped caring and I just do my work Sometimes I feel dirty.
- loxs 7y ago
  Did the same, but for me the transition was from Linux (various flavours) to Mac OS. Feel even dirtier :(
- h1d 7y ago
  What's so dirty bypassing that isn't productive for you?
  - z3phyr 7y ago
    What does productive mean? The thing that get you satisfaction or money?
    - munmaek 7y ago
      Being able to Just Do Things without mucking around in config files, building a, b, c things from source and dealing with random missing dependencies d, e, f. Then having to search online to fix Random Obscure Errors g, h i, etc, and so on. Or in the case of bsd-likes, maybe needing to write ports and adapt makefiles, etc. I've gone Arch -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian for my main pc, and osx for my laptop. I used to like manually tweaking and configuring everything but these days I just want to turn on the computer and get into a workflow with as few headaches as possible.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gbmor 7y ago
stabbles 7y ago
Does anyone know the status of Bluetooth on OpenBSD? I believe it does not ship Bluez by default?
- gbrown_ 7y ago
  It was removed [1] and there aren't plans to bring it back as far as I'm aware. Though you may be surprised in that you can get away without Bluetooth support for some things, e.g. [2]. [1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2 [2] https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html
hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
He literally can't do his job on this OS... He runs his critical workloads (Linux virtual machines) on another laptop with Linux installed.
- 4ad 7y ago
  But he can. I have no idea why he dismissed vmd.
  - sogubsys 7y ago
    I need to run Windows workstation and server VMs, too. (In the screenshot, I show Windows). Additionally, the Linux VM cons with vmd are off-putting, but I'll be getting them working. I even saw a blog post about running docker containers on linux on vmd. So, I'm going to try that out soon :D
- sogubsys 7y ago
  To be clear, it is more than Linux virtual machines but also Windows. The VMs are for penetration testing labs and R&D. It isn't my job, it is my hobby. I can do my job with ssh terminals and a browser.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  >OpenBSD is a fantastic operating system, but it is not a good choice as virtualization host. I like the idea of the computer that I physically interface with being extremely secure. Considering everything I do with virtualization is through a shell and little I do works without the Internet, accepting a bit of extra inconvenience to have that security seems like a decent trade-off.
akulbe 7y ago
I have Linux-on-the-Windows-Desktop. WSL, that is. For my use case, it's fucking amazing. I've come full circle. I switched from Windows to Linux in 1999. I switched from Linux to Mac in 2003. I've used Linux natively, it turned into a hack-fest. I spent more time trying to get things working, than getting ACTUAL work done. Using the Linux platform for development is fantastic. It's when you want to do non-dev related productivity stuff that it got frustrating for me. You had to have workarounds galore. Or you had to have Wine, or you had to have a full Windows VM (when $APP didn't have a good nix-y equivalent). macOS was great when the computer hardware was prioritized. Then at some point, Apple shifted focus. It was all about a cohesive experience, and integration galore. Then it shifted. Now it's all about iOS/iPadOS/watchOS/tvOS. macOS and its hardware have largely taken a back seat. See the MacBook Pro 2016-. When Apple releases the 2019 MBP and it IMMEDIATELY goes onto the keyboard repair program... you know that in spite of all lip service to the contrary, that Apple gives no fucks about the Apple computer, like they do their gravy train products. I needed an environment that'd let me still target Linux development, but stay-the-eff-out-of-my-way for productivity stuff. Windows it is. I know that's not what HNer's wanna hear, but the cultural shift at MS and using MS for a dev platform... it's been surprising, and amazing. Not what I'd expected in a million years. #flyingpigs #flameon Anyone else experience a similar evolution?
- moksly 7y ago
  I’ve made the same transitions from win to Linux to Mac and for the same reasons. I’m going back to Linux though. I’ve used windows professionally all that time and Windows 10 is the least productive it’s ever been, for me anyway. It’s just such a horrible experience and I don’t know exactly why that is. I didn’t even mind CMD and powershell and it’s not that I dislike Microsoft. I recently traded my personal g-suite in for a Office365 essentials plan, and I’m rather happy with it, but I just can’t get on the right food of Windows 10. I wish I could, the Surface Books are genuinely the modern MacBook Pro, but Ubuntu is just a better experience. Of course there is still a few quirks, the only one that’s really bothered me is the lack of a Linux One Drive client, which should frankly tell you how little Microsoft has really changed. They don’t intend to be good for Linux, they want Linux to be good for them.
fluffything 7y ago
There are trade-offs involved in choosing OpenBSD for a "Work"station, and the post covers some: lack of packages/no proper package manager (requires recompiling with patches from source), no Docker/VMs/VirtualBox/Wine, etc. Other are lack of drivers, etc. None of these issues are incompatible with an Operating System design (or not really), they mostly just need extra work. However, the blog post mentions that "for them" performance isn't an issue. This should not be interpreted as performance being good. OpenBSD performance can only be described with data: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=8-linux-bsd https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=8-linux-... Even for something that the OpenBSD devs themselves are doing all the time, compiling stuff, OpenBSD is ~20x slower than Linux. 2x slower would be horrible. I really have no words to describe 20x slower performance. If you are a dev working with a compiled language, imagine a 20x perf hit on compile-times. Imagine having to patch LLVM/Clang on OpenBSD by recompiling it from source. "Apocalyptically horrible", "worst in class", do not even make justice for how slow OpenBSD is.
- dpwm 7y ago
  I'm not sure how much we can extrapolate from those benchmarks. Despite the name, compilebench[0][1] seems to do a lot of non-compiling stuff. It appears to be more of a filesystem benchmark. [0] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/compilebench https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/compilebench [1] https://oss.oracle.com/~mason/compilebench/ https://oss.oracle.com/~mason/compilebench/
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  > requires recompiling with patches from source I don't think that's true. There's pkg_add and syspatch and those are preferred methods for upgrading your system. You can recompile things from source and I think that it's an awesome feature for hacker, who wants to tinker with sources of some package, but that's not the only way.
  - fluffything 7y ago
    Between distro releases, if you want to apply security patches, you need to recompile from source, because there are no binary releases.
sogubsys 7y ago
Thanks to everyone for sharing their opinions, feedback, and help! I truly appreciate it and was not expecting my blog post to explode like it did. I am grateful for your kindness and hope you have a great time hacking away :)
vasili111 7y ago
I wish BSD systems had better support for hardware.
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
Excerpt: "Speed is Stellar The speed of the system is stellar. I feel like it is faster than the Linux and FreeBSD installations, but I don’t have proof of it. I suspect there is less bloat to weight things down and the hardware support for Thinkpads is super in OpenBSD." One of the hallmarks of a good Operating System...

294 points by sogubsys 7y ago

I like openbsd. I like their attitude (even if many don’t) I like what they’ve given to the UNIX-likes, and what they strip away due to complexity (removal of Bluetooth) or lack of decent UX (wpa_supplicant), or just potential issues (removal of Hyperthreading) I know it’s probably controversial to mention it; but I’m also glad they didn’t buy into the code of conduct saga that waved over FreeBSD and eventually Linux. I’ve used the OS as a daily driver, it certainly was nice, albeit slow. I would go back if I could avoid some of the Linux/MacOS stuff I really need. I still use it on personal servers and I still really love it. I send them €50/mo but I don’t feel like it’s enough. I wish they had more resources to bring things like AC Wi-Fi to the fold. Truly impressive work to all involved.

temptemptemp111 7y ago
Yep, same. I'm not ready to flee Linux just because of the CoC, though. Need to stand our ground.
umvi 7y ago
> but I’m also glad they didn’t buy into the code of conduct saga that waved over FreeBSD and eventually Linux. I'm a bit out of the loop, but I thought it started with Linux because Linus swore/ranted/"abused" contributors or something? Or am I thinking of something else?
- dijit 7y ago
  It’s fair to be out of the loop. I wish I was, because dissenting for any reason is seen as being a villain or a troll. For a little context though the freebsd code of conduct was instantiated in 14th February 2018 - the Linux one was altered to be the current one on September 21st of the same year (which is when the Linux CoC controversy began).
- calcifer 7y ago
  He was quite abusive actually, not "abusive".
  - derefr 7y ago
    You seem to be interpreting the parent as using scare-quotes to disagree with the idea that Linus's behavior was "abusive." But the parent comment was, as far as I can tell, intending to use regular quotation marks, in the way a journalist does (and as I just did)—to mention what someone else said, without endorsing or denying that opinion as their own, in order to avoid an argument. (Personally, I think more things people describe should be put in quotation marks. A lot of Internet arguments are started by people trying to argue others out of beliefs they don't actually personally have.)
    - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
      Quotes only work with attribution
vvvij 7y ago
Do you think it would fare better under new AMD CPUs? (besides the raw increment in performance) I do hope that as long as Theo is in charge they never but into the whole CoC thing. Thankfully, from what I recall, some of their biggest backers are from China and thankfully they don't really give a crap about CoC, feelings or human decency in tech, for better or for worse.
cpach 7y ago
What is it that you don’t like regarding CoC?
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  I'm not OP, but: > Harassment includes but is not limited to: Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, [...]. -- FreeBSD CoC Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part? I can only assume that they'll be more lenient on disparaging comments that don't reinforce "systemic oppression", i.e. they'll apply "positive discrimination", otherwise it makes no sense to include such an expression in the CoC. I refuse to participate in any project that discriminates people based on their personal traits, that includes "positive discrimination".
  - YUMad 7y ago
    Because 'systemic oppression' is a made up concept, just like 'Jesus'. And just like Jesus, it's a guilt-exploiting profit- and power-seeking concept.
    - dang 7y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - klodolph 7y ago
    > Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part? Because systematic oppression is more of a systemic problem. Individual problems are easier to solve than systemic problems, i.e, you don’t need a code of conduct to solve a problem with one or two people in your association. If you make one disparaging comment to someone, we can hope that they take that one comment in stride and move on. If you make a disparaging comment that reinforces systemic oppression, it’s no longer a single comment, but it’s part of a larger problem. The way these comments harm the group is that e.g. in response to low-level misogynistic comments, women silently leave the group. You might not even notice this happening until it is too late. One of the core freedoms which is protected by the first amendment is the freedom of association, and a key part of that is the freedom not to associate with people you don’t like. If you don’t make an explicit choice about who you want in your association, the choice will be made for you by the most toxic members. So you are basically given a choice between an open code of conduct which people can discuss or comment on, or a secret/hidden network of people who make the decisions without any clear way to understand why they make these decisions or how to appeal them. That’s just my take on it.
hackermailman 7y ago
Most OpenBSD developers know each other and meet on a regular basis so likely why no CoC is needed when there isn't dozens or hundreds of contributors that don't meet. I miss OpenBSD for the certainty of what my system is doing, these other systems I have to use for work some intelligent process comes a long and rewrites my configs or something else annoying.
adrianratnapala 7y ago
Does OpenBSD have an alternative to wpa_supplicant? I've been using wpa_supplicant under the hood for ages, but only recently learned anything about it... and it's actually very good, except that it's CLI interface is so low-level and difficult to use.
- octotoad 7y ago
  Its standard ifconfig handles all the equivalent functionality.
  - dTal 7y ago
    I don't use OpenBSD for various functionality-related reasons, but experiencing that was an eye-opener. It makes me mad that Linux doesn't use such a clearly superior system, and leads one to wonder what other needlessly complex interfaces we put up with unquestioningly.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      There are things other than wpa_supplicant, but wpa_supplicant is just sorta "good enough", everything generally works. It's a different approach. For me, my OpenBSD moment was when I used the backlight brightness keys on a laptop in a vt, and it Just Worked™.
      - adrianratnapala 7y ago
        I would put it the other way around. wpa_supplicant is actually very good at doing what it does. But rolling it's functionality into ifconfig is probably "good enough". wpa_supplicant is an application of the "do one thing" philosophy. The kernel provides a some basic hardware-abstracted plumbing which lets a specialist tool do all the complicated handshaking and what-not for wireless. This saves the basic tools (ifconfig, ip) from having to build in all that wireless complexity. But it does introduce an extra moving part that has to be configured. For this reason, just bloating it into the basic tool is likely to be good enough, and also provider a superior UX (for nerds like us).
somacert 7y ago
Openbsd has a code of conduct. It's been there a while. https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html only half joking
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > Intelligent people may look at the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. Repeating the same points that didn't convince someone previously rarely changes their mind, and irritates all the other readers. This one is crucial. I see so little respect for tolerance around various projects these days.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  I can support a CoC that opens with, "Plain text, 72 characters per line". Standards™!
wrycoder 7y ago
I don't think there are many who send €50/mo, kudos to you! Few of their corporate users give much back at all. I used OpenBSD as my workstation a decade ago and also ran it on a firewall box. However, upgrading the system every six months is tedious: basically, you manually download the files, overwrite the kernel and userland core, and then do a three way merge of /etc. Plus there's a bit of manual work required to deleted unused files and account for moved files: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade65.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade65.html After that, you still have to upgrade the ports tree (which has gotten easier). Note that skipping upgrades is not supported. Security updates between the six month upgrades are handled by monitoring the security list and downloading and applying patches as instructed. If you are running a bunch of identical servers professionally, it's not much of a burden, but it is if you are upgrading one workstation and a firewall box. I got tight on time and went back to Debian/apt. Does anyone here know how to do this more efficiently? (It is a really nice system, and the man pages are superb.)
- asveikau 7y ago
  sysmerge has made the upgrade process a lot easier in the last several years. It was a lot more painful in the past.
- jammygit 7y ago
  Is it easier or harder to just do a full reinstall and reconfigure it with a script (chef or something custom), while preserving your data directory?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Somewhat like sibling comment, I'd be really tempted to put /home on its own filesystem, control/configure everything else with Ansible (or Chef or Puppet or [...]), and just do a fresh install every 6 months. For bonus points, automate the install part with an autoinstall file. Keep in mind, there's setup cost here; it's easy for me to say because I'm already controlling my system with Ansible, but if you're just getting started it's harder.
- sirn 7y ago
  In -current there’s sysupgrade(8) that handles the “download bsd.rd, boot bsd.rd, upgrade, sysmerge” steps automatically in an unattended manner.
bitwize 7y ago
Projects without a code of conduct are either immature or led by reactionaries, and in either case have a much higher risk of toxicity. If you want to get something done in a communitarian fashion, implementing, clearly stating, and enforcing rules of conduct is an absolute must.
- tick_tock_tick 7y ago
  I agree with you in principle but most of the codes of conduct being pushed during the last major wave had very little to do with that goal. They were clearly targeted at policing users online/offline conduct and values outside of the project rather than fixing any active issues for that project.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    A person who's a dick outside the official channels is much more likely to be a dick on the official channels also. Tolerating such people is inimical to creating a welcoming community, as they pose considerable risk of disrupting development activity and intimidating people who are or might potentially be making valuable contributions.
    - jim-jim-jim 7y ago
      Do all projects have to be "welcoming" though? Sometimes I wonder if OpenBSD (and other projects that emphasize simplicity) are as good as they are precisely because they seem to attract opinionated, blunt developers with thick hides.
- hiram112 7y ago
  I suppose you're right. Before the CoC craze, the open source community just wasn't able to crank out anything of technical value. But since then, things have really taken off, and there's no doubt we can attribute it to the CoC and also the non-technical community members who, more often than not, demanded we carry it.
  - 7y ago

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

>Speed is Stellar >Speed is not a concern for me. Is he saying that speed isn't a concern for him in general? If so, why mention that the speed is stellar, then? Or is he saying that the system is so light in general that he doesn't suspect speed will become a problem down the line?

ziddoap 7y ago
It is pretty ambiguous, isn't it? I read it similar to your 2nd take, that the speed is abundant enough that not much needs to be said - its just fast.
sogubsys 7y ago
You're right, my mistake in communication there. Speed is not a concern for me because it is fast for everything I use the laptop for. I didn't hit snags where things were slow. I'll update the post later for clarity. Thank you for pointing it out.
- blackhaz 7y ago
  Great stuff. Also a big fan of OpenBSD, but what put me off eventually is lack of VMs, Wine and... speed. On Thinkpad T410 (ancient) it was noticeably slower than FreeBSD almost on any task, especially video playback in the browser. Not really related to the file system use. Perhaps, the effect is not as pronounced on CPUs of these days. Software selection was also a little claustrophobic. I'm now using FreeBSD as my main machine for almost a year - really happy with the outcome, but even there some areas, like neural networks for example, are difficult. (But Keras and Theano are there!) In many aspects OpenBSD was amazing. It needed very little tinkering with to get running properly, configs and ps ax were super-clean. Amazing environment.
  - edwintorok 7y ago
    There is some work done about VMs: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html
7y ago

gbrown_ 7y ago

> vmd is cool tech, for sure, but it isn’t that useful to me. It is best if you want to run OpenBSD virtual machines or gimped Linux virtual machines. The use of "gimped" is poor choice of words. It would be better if the author described specifically what fell short for them.

sogubsys 7y ago
From https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html The following features are available: serial console access to the virtual machines tap(4) interfaces per-VM user/group ownership privilege separation raw, qcow2 and qcow2-derived images dumping and restoring of guest system memory virtual switch management pausing and unpausing VMs The following features are not available at this time: graphics snapshots guest SMP support hardware passthrough live migration across hosts live hardware change Supported guest operating systems are currently limited to OpenBSD and Linux. As there is no VGA support yet, the guest OS must support serial console.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  One thing I've been meaning to try doing (and probably will indeed try doing on my "workhorse" laptop at home, which is currently insufficiently used) is experiment with running X clients from a vmd-managed Linux VM, plus perhaps figuring out a way to stream audio in/out of the VM (and - as icing on the cake - video in). If I can get reasonably decent graphics, sound, and webcam support (in order of importance), I'd be able to return to running OpenBSD on my work laptop (I'm currently unable to do so because there are a couple apps I use daily for work that don't run on OpenBSD).
- gbrown_ 7y ago
  I'm aware graphics support isn't fully there. My concern is for the general audience not familiar with the current status. In the post to hand wave over what didn't work when tried and call it "gimped" leads the reader to think any number of things may not work. I see this has been updated with a link to the FAQ. I'm a big believer in laying out problems as; - What was expected - What was tried - What was the result - Why the result differed from the expectation

stonogo 7y ago

OpenBSD will download your wifi firmware during first boot (post-install) if there is a configured internet connection (i.e. ethernet).

microcolonel 7y ago
A lot of Linux distros just ship a lot of this firmware, not expecting to be litigated against for it; and it seems to work out.
- petecox 7y ago
  c.f. Debian, which has a policy to exclude non-free firmware from its installation media. The onus is on the user to themselves supply the firmware. https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en
sogubsys 7y ago
You're correct. My complaint was about installation time. I thought there was an instance where I saw all the access points somehow during the installer, but unsure how I did that... and I couldn't replicate it. I suspected that I had wired ethernet configured, and then the installer downloaded firmware to configure wireless? It was just a guess, I didn't look more into it.
flukus 7y ago
Is there an easy to use alternative? Less and less laptops are coming with ethernet ports.

loop0 7y ago

I tried openbsd in my thinkpad x220. IDK if the processor only make a huge difference (mine being core i3 2.1ghz), but what I saw was a slow system experience, opening firefox for the first time (after boot) took a decade. I would experience slugishness everytime I closed a tab. And I was using cwm which is supposed to be even more lightweight than xfce4. I'm upgrading my motherboard to have the same processor as the author, maybe I will give another shot.

dmm 7y ago
Were you using a traditional spinning rust hard drive? OpenBSD is basically unusable without an SSD because of the filesystem they use.
- jamesmp98 7y ago
  I'm not overly familiar with OpenBSD (although I do want to try and play with it sometime soon) What filesystem does it use?
  - mikehotel 7y ago
    FFS (Fast File System) or FFS2 (Enhanced Fast File System) https://man.openbsd.org/newfs.8#O https://man.openbsd.org/newfs.8#O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System
    - unop 7y ago
      The irony!
- loop0 7y ago
  I was using an Intel 80gb ssd msata
- edwintorok 7y ago
  I think you need to enable Soft Updates: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates I don't know why it is not done by default, running without soft updates feels like using a filesystem without a journal.

rasengan 7y ago

> Update: The core dumps are due to buggy programs. OpenBSD malloc is not as forgiving to blatant programming errors as other implementations of malloc available on other Operating Systems. What is the difference/error?

yellowapple 7y ago
OpenBSD's malloc is much more strict for security reasons. A crash sucks, but it's infinitely preferable to an undetected bug that leaks data. Heartbleed was famously possible even when using OpenSSL on OpenBSD because OpenSSL (if I understand right) used its own custom allocator instead of the system malloc, thus bypassing the various attack mitigations OpenBSD's malloc provides (and that would have prevented Heartbleed from affecting OpenBSD systems). This (among other instances of similar behavior) is what prompted the OpenBSD folks to fork OpenSSL into libressl.

auraham 7y ago

I am attached to Ubuntu because of apt, my development stack (python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, and so on), and i3 as window manager. I would like to give it a try, but I am not sure if these applications are available in OpenBSD.

basscomm 7y ago
Apt isn't available for OpenBSD, but the rest of the apps you listed are: https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.5/packages/amd64/ https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.5/packages/amd64/

cubano 7y ago

So, you are giving up what seems like your 2 most important apps (Evernote and VMs) just so you can run X operating system on a laptop? Excuse me, but this just doesn't make any sense. Applications are the reason we use computers, not OSs, and to have to make such sacrifices is IMHO just silly. The whole OS holy-war thing seems so played out to me...its 2019 just use whatever works..no one care really. Add to that the apparent political nature of the openbsd "manifesto" and guidelines and I'll just say that I, personally, am not a fan of mixing politics and OSs.

davesmith1983 7y ago
Well you can speak for yourself. I am an operating system enthusiast :D
effie 7y ago
It's a user vs. enthusiast things. Some enthusiast people deal with computers because they like the technology or the ideas.
sogubsys 7y ago
I understand what you're saying but I fear you may be misunderstanding my intentions and opinions. I feel you may be injecting your own issues with things into my blog post. Please allow me explain. The importance of having a secure and correct OS is most important to me (I feel OpenBSD is most appropriate and interesting here). I feel the value of OpenBSD outweighs the lose of two applications. I'm not part of an OS war, I frankly don't care what anyone uses. I just posted about about my experience on my blog (blogging is a new/rare thing for me and I am proud of the post, it took hours to do) and frankly didn't expect the post to HN to do anything (I posted on a whim, a coworker next to me loves the site) :) I intended to migrate off of Evernote at some point, it is a tough band-aid to pull off after getting used to it for 10 years. Not having native VirtualBox on the machine is definitely a dislike, but isn't the end of the world. I only need it for labs. NetBSD can apparently run in vmm, too, just have to pass a boot option for the serial console (but I haven't tried it). For Evernote, I had to ask myself what I'm actually using Evernote for. I'm solely using it for having minimally rich text and website scrapes stored in notebooks, and all notes being searchable. And I want it available wherever I am. I don't use OSR, non-text notes, pro features, related notes, etc. So, I question why I'm still paying for it, entrusting a vendor with all my data, and dealing with non-standard clients outside of windows/mac. Doing something just because I've always done is a terrible pattern. Time to re-evaluate and fix. That's what I did, and now I have an extremely portable and flexible solution that doesn't cost me anything but time, which I'm OK with. I make a living with Linux for high traffic web applications, I use NetBSD and Linux for my personal servers, and OpenBSD for my workstation. I enjoy operating systems and I'm comfortable in all of them. Each one has their own character, their own quirks and pros and cons. One size fits all, for me, is a fool's game. No matter what you choose, there's some price to be paid for what you get. And to be crystal clear: I'm not trying to change hearts and minds, or influence others, or be part of some cool kids club. Ultimately, I'm selfish with my hobbies, which this is, and so I do what solely is interesting to me. If I was able to help others, that's great and I'm happy for that, but I have no expectations. Thank you. I hope we can be on the same page now, and I hope I was not too verbose. Be well. An update to the article too about VMs: Note that for VMs I'm now using Oracle (non-distro provided) Virtualbox with their VRDP active, which is RDP for the VM instance and not the VM OS itself, so can RDP to the VMs on the network much better than libvirt. So, it is good enough. VirtualBox is mainly for intensive labs or monkeying with NetBSD kernel development, which 99% of the time I'd do at home.

davesmith1983 7y ago

I've been using OpenBSD since 3.8. OpenBSD is a great system because it makes sense. If you want to find out how something works. You go to the manual page. A lot of questions about the Operating system can be found on the FAQ. Much like Arch Linux, I don't find myself needing to Google around forums trying to find a solution. I go to the docs and 99% of the time I will find the solution. The reasons for using it aren't really that exciting. It is a basic system that works well.

markhahn 7y ago

surely "my workstation is now openbsd". fwiw, didn't mention anything at all that would make me budge from linux...

sogubsys 7y ago
That's OK, I was posting about my experience without intentions to change hearts and minds of others. I'm just a geek playing around, ya know.

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

I hate the fact that Thinkpads are the laptops with the best OpenBSD support. I dislike Thinkpads for two reasons: - They're made by Lenovo. A couple of years ago, Lenovo bundled malware in the BIOS of their laptops [superfish incident]. For that reason, I won't ever again buy a single product from them, since I can't trust them. - They're ugly. I find most current laptops ugly, so this may be my fault, and by itself it wouldn't be enough of a reason not to buy one. But still.

megous 7y ago
BIOS?
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  "The engine, which resides in the computer's BIOS, replaces a core Windows system file with its own, allowing files to be downloaded once the device is connected to the internet." https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-software-could-not-be-deleted/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-sof...
hnnmzh 7y ago
also - they no longer use T40 style keyboards, which are the best.
- sogubsys 7y ago
  I do like the keyboard on this T420, it is a pleasure.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  The chiclet keyboard on my T470 is still pretty great, though.
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    Hardly anyone minds the typing feel of the current or recent generation ThinkPad keyboards. What many of us lament is the loss of the classic 7-row keyboard layout like the T420 had. But that ship sank years ago. I've made my peace with the new layout, but I do miss the old one.

user00012-ab 7y ago

This article is what is wrong with bsd/linux. You have to write an article about all the things you did to get your desktop to just work like any normal desktop works out of the box. In a normal world, the article should read "I installed bsd, and just used my computer to do something useful."

atq2119 7y ago
Throwing Linux in with BSD here is not fair. The experience with the major Linux distribution tends to be exactly this: you install them and stuff just works -- especially on desktop hardware.
microcolonel 7y ago
Well idunno. I don't concern myself with "trends" and such on GNU/Linux, and things generally get better for me year over year. I have used Linux as my main desktop operating system, to do productive work, for years. I pay a bit of attention to the hardware I'm installing it on (which a lot of people I guess don't feel they should need to, but what do they say about macOS?), but other than that it's basically been the same for me for years. I get better peripherals, components, and assembled computers, and the experience gets better in the ways you would expect for that upgrade. I think in both cases, people could stand to pay a little bit of attention to what hardware they're using. A lot of people aren't used to this because their hardware comes with an OS that is ostensibly "certified" for it, in the way that bugs in the integration can sometimes be warranty claims. Those manufacturers pay attention to whether or not drivers are available for Windows to support the hardware they're shipping, but consumers experience it as "it just works".
sogubsys 7y ago
There's more to it. It isn't a "Use OpenBSD, everything else sucks", it was simply "I used OpenBSD on a Thinkpad T420 and let me tell you about it". I also posted about that I tried Linux (Ubuntu), FreeBSD, and OpenBSD on the laptop before deciding on OpenBSD. It wasn't made out of stubbornness. It was simply the right choice for me for that laptop. And I shared my experience getting it up to a state I was used to with my previous Linux workstation (that this laptop replaced).

lacampbell 7y ago

Less 'mainstream' OS's seem more viable to me right now, because pretty much every bit of software I use these days runs in either a terminal or a browser. With termux I feel like I could use just an android phone if I had to.

merlincorey 7y ago

Thanks for sharing this! I run OpenBSD on my refurbished T430, and have very similar experiences. Glad you have moved on from Evernote to something local and parse-able!

anthony_doan 7y ago

I bought a used Thinkpad to use OpenBSD. The default installation is good and the internals are easy to understand. It's not as complicated as Linux. The security etho is what brought me to OpenBSD and the simplicity and easy to understand how everything works made me love it even more. The only reason why I haven't use it much after a few months is because I needed RStudio. I wanted to settle for tmux+vim workflow for R but I've been busy with other stuff.

waynesonfire 7y ago

BSD OS's are very appealing to me given the infiltration of systemd on linux. I'm very excited to be deploying FreeBSD on my homelab network.

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

For years I lived in FreeBSD world - servers and laptops. I was fighting the good fight and rationalised that having to only remember one location for network services was a win. Then I took a second look. I realised that I was spending waaayy too much time getting the laptop usable (usually wifi) and not going enough using it I bailed for ubuntu and I cannot remember where the network confit is and hate the GUI but I have stopped caring and I just do my work Sometimes I feel dirty.

loxs 7y ago
Did the same, but for me the transition was from Linux (various flavours) to Mac OS. Feel even dirtier :(
h1d 7y ago
What's so dirty bypassing that isn't productive for you?
- z3phyr 7y ago
  What does productive mean? The thing that get you satisfaction or money?
  - munmaek 7y ago
    Being able to Just Do Things without mucking around in config files, building a, b, c things from source and dealing with random missing dependencies d, e, f. Then having to search online to fix Random Obscure Errors g, h i, etc, and so on. Or in the case of bsd-likes, maybe needing to write ports and adapt makefiles, etc. I've gone Arch -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian for my main pc, and osx for my laptop. I used to like manually tweaking and configuring everything but these days I just want to turn on the computer and get into a workflow with as few headaches as possible.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gbmor 7y ago

stabbles 7y ago

Does anyone know the status of Bluetooth on OpenBSD? I believe it does not ship Bluez by default?

gbrown_ 7y ago
It was removed [1] and there aren't plans to bring it back as far as I'm aware. Though you may be surprised in that you can get away without Bluetooth support for some things, e.g. [2]. [1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2 [2] https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html

hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago

He literally can't do his job on this OS... He runs his critical workloads (Linux virtual machines) on another laptop with Linux installed.

4ad 7y ago
But he can. I have no idea why he dismissed vmd.
- sogubsys 7y ago
  I need to run Windows workstation and server VMs, too. (In the screenshot, I show Windows). Additionally, the Linux VM cons with vmd are off-putting, but I'll be getting them working. I even saw a blog post about running docker containers on linux on vmd. So, I'm going to try that out soon :D
sogubsys 7y ago
To be clear, it is more than Linux virtual machines but also Windows. The VMs are for penetration testing labs and R&D. It isn't my job, it is my hobby. I can do my job with ssh terminals and a browser.
colechristensen 7y ago
>OpenBSD is a fantastic operating system, but it is not a good choice as virtualization host. I like the idea of the computer that I physically interface with being extremely secure. Considering everything I do with virtualization is through a shell and little I do works without the Internet, accepting a bit of extra inconvenience to have that security seems like a decent trade-off.

akulbe 7y ago

I have Linux-on-the-Windows-Desktop. WSL, that is. For my use case, it's fucking amazing. I've come full circle. I switched from Windows to Linux in 1999. I switched from Linux to Mac in 2003. I've used Linux natively, it turned into a hack-fest. I spent more time trying to get things working, than getting ACTUAL work done. Using the Linux platform for development is fantastic. It's when you want to do non-dev related productivity stuff that it got frustrating for me. You had to have workarounds galore. Or you had to have Wine, or you had to have a full Windows VM (when $APP didn't have a good nix-y equivalent). macOS was great when the computer hardware was prioritized. Then at some point, Apple shifted focus. It was all about a cohesive experience, and integration galore. Then it shifted. Now it's all about iOS/iPadOS/watchOS/tvOS. macOS and its hardware have largely taken a back seat. See the MacBook Pro 2016-. When Apple releases the 2019 MBP and it IMMEDIATELY goes onto the keyboard repair program... you know that in spite of all lip service to the contrary, that Apple gives no fucks about the Apple computer, like they do their gravy train products. I needed an environment that'd let me still target Linux development, but stay-the-eff-out-of-my-way for productivity stuff. Windows it is. I know that's not what HNer's wanna hear, but the cultural shift at MS and using MS for a dev platform... it's been surprising, and amazing. Not what I'd expected in a million years. #flyingpigs #flameon Anyone else experience a similar evolution?

moksly 7y ago
I’ve made the same transitions from win to Linux to Mac and for the same reasons. I’m going back to Linux though. I’ve used windows professionally all that time and Windows 10 is the least productive it’s ever been, for me anyway. It’s just such a horrible experience and I don’t know exactly why that is. I didn’t even mind CMD and powershell and it’s not that I dislike Microsoft. I recently traded my personal g-suite in for a Office365 essentials plan, and I’m rather happy with it, but I just can’t get on the right food of Windows 10. I wish I could, the Surface Books are genuinely the modern MacBook Pro, but Ubuntu is just a better experience. Of course there is still a few quirks, the only one that’s really bothered me is the lack of a Linux One Drive client, which should frankly tell you how little Microsoft has really changed. They don’t intend to be good for Linux, they want Linux to be good for them.

fluffything 7y ago

There are trade-offs involved in choosing OpenBSD for a "Work"station, and the post covers some: lack of packages/no proper package manager (requires recompiling with patches from source), no Docker/VMs/VirtualBox/Wine, etc. Other are lack of drivers, etc. None of these issues are incompatible with an Operating System design (or not really), they mostly just need extra work. However, the blog post mentions that "for them" performance isn't an issue. This should not be interpreted as performance being good. OpenBSD performance can only be described with data: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=8-linux-bsd https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=8-linux-... Even for something that the OpenBSD devs themselves are doing all the time, compiling stuff, OpenBSD is ~20x slower than Linux. 2x slower would be horrible. I really have no words to describe 20x slower performance. If you are a dev working with a compiled language, imagine a 20x perf hit on compile-times. Imagine having to patch LLVM/Clang on OpenBSD by recompiling it from source. "Apocalyptically horrible", "worst in class", do not even make justice for how slow OpenBSD is.

dpwm 7y ago
I'm not sure how much we can extrapolate from those benchmarks. Despite the name, compilebench[0][1] seems to do a lot of non-compiling stuff. It appears to be more of a filesystem benchmark. [0] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/compilebench https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/compilebench [1] https://oss.oracle.com/~mason/compilebench/ https://oss.oracle.com/~mason/compilebench/
vbezhenar 7y ago
> requires recompiling with patches from source I don't think that's true. There's pkg_add and syspatch and those are preferred methods for upgrading your system. You can recompile things from source and I think that it's an awesome feature for hacker, who wants to tinker with sources of some package, but that's not the only way.
- fluffything 7y ago
  Between distro releases, if you want to apply security patches, you need to recompile from source, because there are no binary releases.

sogubsys 7y ago

Thanks to everyone for sharing their opinions, feedback, and help! I truly appreciate it and was not expecting my blog post to explode like it did. I am grateful for your kindness and hope you have a great time hacking away :)

vasili111 7y ago

I wish BSD systems had better support for hardware.

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

Excerpt: "Speed is Stellar The speed of the system is stellar. I feel like it is faster than the Linux and FreeBSD installations, but I don’t have proof of it. I suspect there is less bloat to weight things down and the hardware support for Thinkpads is super in OpenBSD." One of the hallmarks of a good Operating System...